The Bike That Road Solo

Today was a great day! I started out a little late, for some reason my computer had logged out and so my alarm did not go off, luckily I only got up 15 minutes later than I meant to (I should have been worried about that last night instead a couple of nights ago during the earthquake). So thankfully it wasn’t too late.
In my first class we talked about shadows! How exciting! I first began by reading them a little story where it just tells in basic terms what a shadow is and then it had a couple of pictures where a shadow was being created (I had the kids point out to me where the shadow was in each picture). After I had made sure they knew what shadows were we went outside to see if we could find any shadows, it was so fun right as we stepped outside there were shadows (our shadows that was) and the kids got so excited on each shadow that they found and would be yelling teacher, teacher there is a shadow!! This is why I want to work with younger kids, I love it because they get so excited over every little thing that they learn and discover and they are still excited about learning. After we had ran all around the playground finding shadows we came back into the classroom and turned off all the lights and closed the curtains on the windows, we then used flashlights to make shadows- the kids enjoyed using their hands, mouths, and letter shaped magnets to make shadows on the wall.
During the middle class we talked about bones, again I began with a little book. While reading the book we talked about how many bones we have in our body (over 200), where the smallest bone is (in your ear if you did not know :D), where the longest bone is (in your leg), and about what happens when you brake a bone (you have to get a cast and let it heal). I then made everyone a cast with toilet paper on their arm, leg, foot, or hand- the kids enjoyed it, they thought it was the funniest thing ever- those who had the cast on their leg or foot started walking around with a limp.
After my middle class is lunch, it was really cool to see Teacher Natalie come in and all of the kids run up to show her their “broken” limb and their casts- it always makes you feel good to see them get excited about what you did in your class. They have a prayer that they say every day for lunch, and it made me laugh so much as some of the kids who had their “casts” on their arms insisted that they could not fold their arms, so the teachers showed them another way to pray. Lunch today was really delicious. It was a curry, I have had a couple of curries that I have liked but I have also had several that I did not like so much. It was interesting, the cook put fresh cut apple chunks on top, I would never have thought of doing that but the apple blended so well with the carrots, chicken, potatoes, onions, and curry sauce. The kids at this (and subsequently the teachers) school get fed such good and yummy food, sometimes there is a flavor that I do not particularly like the most but most of the food is amazing (and even better because I don’t have to make it or pay for it :D)
After lunch I came upstairs for a little while, it wasn’t long before I was feeling really tired and so I decided to take a nap. I first slept for a half an hour and when I woke up and saw that Natalie was also sleeping in the kitchen still I decided that I really don’t need a hour and a half to prepare for my lesson so I went back to sleep for another half an hour. I really appreciated getting the sleep but at the same time I woke up kind of feeling worse than when I had gone to sleep. Natalie woke up at about the same time as I did and we both went downstairs to make sure that we had everything ready for our classes. It was kind of fun, both Yuling and Teacher Stephanie were downstairs and so we just got to talk with them while we were getting ready/waiting. We were mostly talking about how different parents worry before their kids come to teach at Owl Preschool, I guess that quite a few parents contact Yuling before their children come here. Yuling told us a story about this girl who came and how Yuling had told the mother that the only thing that she could promise was that the girl would not get married while in Taiwan, anyway I guess the girl had asked if she could stay for another semester and if this guy could come work there at the school also. I guess it wasn’t very long before the girl also asked she could have the last couple of weeks off to go home to the US, when Yuling asked her why she said so that she could get married to the guy (and I guess Yuling wrote to the mother and was like I kept my promise, she didn’t get married while in Taiwan :D). I thought that it was a funny story.
In my afternoon class we were again talking about transportation (don’t worry tomorrow is the last day :D), and today our particular topic was scooters, ok so not really… I began by reading a story about two mice who decide to go on a trip but it mentioned a little bit how they traveled so I thought that it fit. We then talked about scooters and how there are two kinds (the electric ones that you sit on (which there are a lot of here) and the kind that you kick (the kids didn’t believe me about the one that you have to kick so I will have to take one in tomorrow to show them- there is one in the supplies closest but I forgot to grab it before class began) ). The kids then ran outside to find a scooter and show me (the teachers ride their scooters to school so there were a couple to be found), after they had shown me the scooter they got to go and play for the rest of the class period on the plastic cars/scooters. They loved it, though the teachers did not like it as much (I don’t remember if I mentioned or not but they don’t like to get sun), after we had played we went back inside and I made sure that every child drank lots of water (it was like a bonus that I got to talk a little bit about drinking lots of water after you have been playing and being in the sun). While I had been talking about scooters in class today Natalie had been talking about trains and the fun part of her class today was that they got to make candy trains (like we used to do at Christmas time) and all of the kids were showing me their trains afterschool when Jimmy (one of the 4 year olds who is LDS and his dad is the 2nd counselor in the Bishopric) asked me if I had a candy train, I told him that I did not, he then told me that I could go to Teacher Natalie’s class and make a candy train. He then grabbed my hand and took me to Teacher Natalie’s class, I walked in and was like Teacher Natalie I was told that I could make a candy train in your class, she was willing to let me make one, I didn’t really want one but I thought that it was really sweet that Jimmy was concerned about whether or not I had a candy train.
When I was walking back towards my apartment I noticed the kids all excited and squealing, I walked over to see what it was, they had found a frog and were following it with hula-hoops, dropping the hula-hoops around the frog and so it had to jump out of it. I thought that, that was fun and ok but then I saw some of the boys trying to squish the poor frog with one of the hula-hoops, I quickly ran over and told them not to do. I may not be the best friend to animals but I don’t see the point of killing a nice animal like that (sorry cockroach you are still not getting saved if you come in my direction).
I wish that I could have followed myself with my camera today. After class I realized that I needed some groceries and I decided that I was going to do it today. While everyone was tutoring I walked downstairs, grabbed Brooke’s bike (Brooke’s bike is broke and she asked if she could borrow mine to ride to the train station yesterday morning as she needed to get there in a hurry and her bike wouldn’t go fast), and walked out the fence. I then road to the grocery store and the bakery all by myself!!!!!! If you can’t tell how excited I am about that fact I will tell you, I just wrote it there and made it bold, I wrote it as my status on facebook, and I think that I at least wrote to four other people about it on facebook. For me that is a big deal/step. So I will actually bring down my balloon just a little, as I have to be honest it was still light out, I don’t think that I am confident enough yet to go bike riding in the dark by myself- it’s not that I don’t know the way (because I do, obviously) but because of all the dogs that are hiding in the shadows, waiting to jump at you and bark and then sometimes chase you. I know that I will eventually reach being able to bike ride in the dark by myself, but not yet!
After I had gone on my wonderful bike ride :D I went downstairs to fill up the water jug from the sink (besides getting strong legs from bike riding I am going to have pretty strong arms by the end of this too from having to carry the water jug up the stairs nearly every day). Somehow on the way up I managed to spill a ton of water on my shorts, so I have been feeling pretty cool! I made dinner (which was delicious chicken nuggets, toast, and French fries :D—don’t worry I had dumplings last night, so not always American), watched a little bit of movie and now here I am! I think that now I am going to sign off and start preparing my lesson for next week (wouldn’t that be amazing if it actually happened?). Sadly no new pictures to post tonight :( That is all, this is Betherd- signing off!